The Best Laid Plans

by Troy Conway

  She was in a state of ecstasy, mouth open and wailing, eyes wide but blind as they stared at the ceiling. Her hips shook, she cried out thickly, she drove herself at me.

  “Now? Please, now?” she whimpered.

  Her fingers pushed me back and away. She lay there with her dress twisted at her girdled hips. Her eyes blazed with desire. “Hurry, strip. Mon Dieu, don’t tease me any more. Strip and come into me.”

  I wished that the floor might open up for me. I was not excited. I was a chapon. Yet my hands went to my Pierre Cardin jacket, thrust it off, revealing my holstered Luger at which her eyes grew enormous. I slipped out of the shoulder-apparatus, shirt and shorts.

  Naked, I stood beside the divan, giving her proof that I was not in control of myself. HECATE was too powerful for the counter-stimulator in my body. No matter what I did, no matter how I feasted my eyes on the splayed white thighs and damp garden before me, I was useless.

  I could have wept.

  Mme. Metayer just lay there, smiling coldly. “Put your clothes back on,” she muttered angrily. “Tu est epuise! You’re finished.”

  It had occurred to me I was playing at bigger stakes than just pleasing this Frenchwoman. If I could not pleasure her body because of the radio controls in my head—I could not refuse to assassinate Henri Planget!

  I saw her reach out with her hand to fondle my manhood. Her face had a disbelieving, stubborn look. She had seen me perform in the HECATE test trials, taking one girl after another, and she could not understand how I could be so pooped. My body was healthy, muscular. I liked girls. There was no reason to be impotent.

  Her head closed in on my loins and she kissed me.

  “Do you want to play games? Is that why you are so reluctant? You have a preference? Is it young girls? Does my body appear too old?”

  “Of course not! You’re a very attractive woman. I adore you. Your thighs are pleasure pillars to wrap my hips in as you trapped my head. I tell you—it’s just a momentary weakness. You must believe me.”

  Even then, I hoped.

  Mme. Metayer came off the divan with a flash of bare thighs. She stood beside me, bending to lift her dress up over her head, showing me her girdled hips, her navel, the bare expanse of midriff. Her breasts in the sheer brassiere she affected were pommes d’amour. Love apples. They were large and soft, quivery flesh half hidden behind black lace. I could make out the large brown nipples standing stiffly.

  She let her cocktail dress drop from her fingers. Her red mouth was a curving delight as she blew my loins a kiss. In girdle and brassiere she moved around the room, dimpling a smile at me.

  “You like the parade? You like to watch the woman walk about? Voilà! Watch me.”

  She was an erotic carving in her high-heeled shoes, moving back and forth like a Minsky stripteaser. Her ringed hands went to the clasps of her brassiere and her fingers worked a moment, then let the bra straps drop. Hunching her shoulders, she let the cups slide away from her dangling breasts.

  Those breasts were big, white, and heavy. They would have roused a Nestor to a priapic frenzy as they shook and bobbled when she threw back her shoulders and shimmied at me. But me? I was still a chapon!

  Mme. Metayer came closer until her nipples were stabbing my chest. Her hands were between us, toying, teasing. Glittering eyes half concealed by long black lashes challenged my manhood. Like me, she could not believe that I was incapable of erection.

  I groaned, “It’s no use. My stay in the hospital left me too weak to do anything. But, please, perhaps my tongue will be so ‘eloquent’ that you won’t wish anything else.”

  “Liar,” she laughed softly. “I saw you in action, remember? I know what you can do. When these five naughty girls went out and left you all alone—with your fax so delightfully enlarged—I thought I would rush down and take you while you were still on that cross. Peste! I’m sorry I didn’t, now.”

  She looked down at me and sighed.

  I knew I would never be able to pleasure her until I’d killed Henri Planget. I also knew that I was going to be forced to kill Henri Planget. HECATE had found the counter-stimulator and removed it.

  I no longer had my ace in the hole. I was defenseless against the murder I must commit. There were bitter ashes on my tongue.

  My hands itched to push away this woman who was determined to seduce me. I needed no seducing, normally; right now was not normal. I was a robot, an automaton. I was good for one thing only, to put a bullet into a man and kill him.

  My condition was not her fault. She wanted danser, and I wasn’t able to give it to her. I passed my hands about her body, drew her against me, kissed her soft mouth. From her lips my mouth fell to her soft throat, to the upper bulges of her breasts, to her stiff nipples. She moaned as my mouth kissed them.

  “Oh, yes,” she panted above my head. “Do me that way!” As a sexologist I realized she was undergoing theletage, that excitement in a woman which is caused by the titillation of her nipples. Her soft palms cupped my cheeks, shifting me steadily from one breast to another.

  After a time, her hips began to move.

  She was sobbing in ecstasy as my hands pushed down her black girdle, unfastening the zipper and sliding the black lastex past her buttocks, baring her belly and the thick black pubic hair. Her hips were engaged in that undulating motion that so closely parallels the actual thing. Her eyes were closed tightly, her mouth was open.

  “If only you could, if only you could,” she kept. whispering.

  “Close your eyes,” I murmured. “Pretend!”

  She stood bent over, breasts hanging.

  “Don’t move,” I warned.

  In my valise, I had a number of sexual curiosities I had picked up in Paris before setting out on my trip with Claudette Marly. Even on my assignments as a Coxeman, I am still the L.S.D. founder. One of these curiosa was an imitation penis formed from hard rubber, also tinted in flesh tones. The second was an artificial vagina of flesh-tinted fabric. The third was a phallatic splint.

  I stood behind Madame Metayer and fitted the splint over my limp flesh. In these hollow splints, there is a space to cram the living flesh. I fitted myself into it and leaned forward.

  She screamed as I entered her, screamed and bucked and jounced her hips in a side to side movement that would have delighted me at any other time. I reached around and caught her dangling breasts, fastening them in my palms by tightening my fingers. Then I let my hips go crazy.

  Our union went on and on.

  Until her knees buckled and she fell forward. I dropped with her, cushioning her body. She finished with a savage wrench of her hips and a thick cry of utter satiety. Then she lay boneless, almost unconscious.

  I drew away, angry at myself, disgusted at my performance. I felt I had prostituted my position in order to give this Frenchwoman temporary satisfaction. I got to my feet, undoing the splint.

  Mme. Metayer opened her eyes.

  She stared in horror at the apparatus I had used on her. Sick dismay touched her face and her hand lifted as if to push away the sight.

  “Batarde!” she sobbed, writhing to one side on the floor, reaching for the crumpled dress where it lay on the carpet. “Did you have to use—that?”

  “I wanted to please you,” I told her.

  To my amazement, tears sprang into her eyes. “You’ve turned me into an animal! I could forgive your inability to perform as a man—I saw what you endured in that place!—but I c-can’t forgive you this.”

  She held the dress before her nakedness like a timid virgin as she got to her feet. Her hands lifted the dress above her head, it slipped down over her shoulders, then to her breasts and about her hips. I could see the tears running down her cheeks, and cursed myself.

  She had wanted romance, I had given her animality.

  For a sexologist, I’d goofed but good.

  I had as an excuse my worriment about the murder I was to commit. If I could not function as a male because of the HECATE controls on my brain,
I certainly wouldn’t be able to get out of assassinating Henri Planget.

  I hurled the splint across the room.

  Margot Metayer sniffled. She was walking toward the suite door, bending to lift her gloves and pocketbook. She said, “Keep my brassiere and my girdle. I could never wear them again, anyhow. They’d remind me of you.”

  The door opened and slammed shut.

  I was alone with myself and my Luger.

  My thoughts were chaotic. I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter that I’d failed to function as a man. But I knew better. HECATE had its thumb on me, and squirm as I might, it wasn’t about to let me go. I was going to have to kill a man.

  “The hell with that,” I growled. “I’ll find a way out of this fix. Nobody turns me into a cold-blooded murderer.”

  Sure. All I had to do was—

  I tried to empty the automatic of its bullets. I drew back the toggle assembly, tried to remove the magazine. My fingers froze on the frame.

  “Come on, damn you,” I whispered to the magazine. “Come out of there!” The magazine ignored me.

  If I couldn’t empty the gun, I’d lose it. I walked to the window, raised it and made as if to throw the Luger away. It stuck to my fingers. More correctly, my fingers would not let go.

  I put the Luger on a tabletop and sat down in a chair to stare at it. “There has to be a way out,” I began in a calm, quiet manner. “I am not an assassin. I will not shoot down Henri Planget just because a couple of doctors stuck a gimmick in my head.”

  My nerves relaxed a little. I sat back and rested my head on the chairback. All I needed to do was think a little. Suppose I ring for room service? I’ll hide the Luger under a napkin when I’m done, and the waiter will take it away with him.

  If he brings it back, I’ll simply deny that it’s mine. I’ll say I’ve never seen it before.

  I reached for the phone to ring room service.

  The club sandwich they brought me, the pot of coffee and the double Scotch on the rocks were all delicious. The napery was white and big. It would hide the automatic perfectly. I would give the waiter a big tip and meet him at the door with the tea tray.

  It worked out fine—in theory.

  When the time came to hide the Luger under the napkin, I couldn’t do it. My hand was nerveless. It refused to transfer the gun from the table where I’d put it to the tea tray. I swore a blue streak, but even my considerable cussword vocabulary was no help.

  I went to bed with visions of executioners and guillotines dancing around in my head. My only consolation was the notion that sometimes the subconscious mind will solve a problem which the conscious mind cannot, after a period of sleep.

  My subconscious was on vacation. I woke up no better off than before. I lay there, staring at the ceiling, and I told myself to get cracking, because tomorrow at high noon, I was going to be forced into killing a man unless I found a way out.

  “And I can’t kill him. I just can’t!”

  I got another harebrained scheme. I would get dressed, go downstairs with my Luger in the shoulder holster, and when I saw a flic, I would yank out the gun and threaten him with it. The cop would lock me up, and Henri Planget would live to a ripe old age.

  Ha! Ha!

  I walked right up to a policeman, but I could no more have taken the Luger out of its holster than I could have jumped a mile into the air. When he looked at me inquiringly, I bowed politely and asked the way to the Louvre.

  Scratch another idea.

  Maybe if I went to some slum corner of Paris, a St. Denis tough might rob me. He would steal the Luger and my troubles would be over. So I waved down a taxi and told the driver to take me to the Quartier Latin.

  I walked the dimly lighted streets of the Latin Quarter, as safe as a novice nun at Mass. Nobody even looked at me twice. As I gave up on that idea, I wondered what I would have done if somebody had tried to rob me. Maybe my controlled mind would have forced me to defend myself.

  So I went back to my hotel room and brooded.

  I had to think about my predicament. The idea came to me that I was able to talk about it, so why not talk to somebody on the telephone? I dialed the police station nearest the Plaza-Athénée.

  When a desk sergeant answered, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I couldn’t say a word. I hung up and kicked the table leg, but all that did was give me a sore toe.

  I went and got the Luger, intending to put a bullet through my foot. I could not pull the trigger.

  Time was running out on me.

  I was a rat in a trap that could go nowhere except where the trap let me go. I collapsed across the divan where Margot Metayer had lain yesterday. I stared at the wall across the room and damned the world.

  In a little while, I was fast asleep.

  Maybe the sleep did my reasoning processes some good, or maybe it was my subconscious mind functioning. Whatever the cause, when I opened my eyes I had another brainstorm.

  I said slowly, to test my theory, “I am supposed to kill a man today, at twelve o’clock noon, as he comes out of the Chateau Frontenac Hotel. He is a high official in the North American Treaty Organization. I am going to kill him because I cannot help myself.”

  I paused, grinning. No problem so far.

  All I needed now was a tape recorder and—

  I got out of bed, got dressed and went downstairs. I inquired at the desk as to the nearest store which sold tape recorders. There was such a store within easy walking distance, I was told.

  I paid close to twenty thousand francs for the recorder, but it would be worth it, if it worked. I asked the clerk who sold me the recorder if he knew where I could find a spiral disc.

  A spiral disc is a round piece of metal on which a black spiral is traced. It is used to hypnotize patients by doctors and psychiatrists. There is usually a small electric motor attached to it so that the disc turns slowly or swiftly. By staring at the rotating spiral, a person can be hypnotized more or less easily.

  The clerk did not know where I could buy such a thing. “On second thought,” he amended as he handed me my change, “There’s a supply house over on the Rue de Coq Bleu.”

  The Rue de Coq Bleu it should be, then.

  In an hour I had both my tape recorder and the spiral disc up in my room. I called room service for ham and scrambled eggs, toast and coffee. What I was about to do would proceed better if I had a full stomach. I would be sleepy with food, and fall prey more easily to the spinning disc.

  I began speaking casually, turning on the tape recorder. “You are going to fall asleep. You are very tired, exhausted. Exhausted. You ache pleasantly in every muscle. You are going to fall asleep, fall asleep. . . . “Sleep, sleep, sleep. . . .

  “You are very tired. Very tired. Your eyelids are so heavy you cannot keep them open. Close your eyelids. Close your eyelids. And sleep. . . .

  “Sleep. . . . “

  I have hypnotized students in my sociology courses, as well as in my League For Sexual Dynamics studies. I have taken courses in the subject and I am considered an expert in the field. I have even hypnotized myself, to test my powers, as part of my sexual studies.

  I talked for half an hour until I was certain that I should be in a deep hypnotic trance, were I staring into the rotating spiral disc. Hypnotism is based on suggestion. If a hypnotized man is told he is eating a heavy meal, his body itself will function as if he had in truth eaten that meal. His stomach will produce the proper digestive juices, he will feel full, he may even get a few indigestion pains.

  A man can be made to remember things under hypnosis, or to forget people and events, even to be insensible to pain. He can be compelled to believe he acted in certain ways—for instance, that he had taken a trip—when in fact he had acted in a completely different manner.

  I did not know whether I could hypnotize myself into not shooting down Henri Planget but it was my last hope. If it failed, I was going to be a murderer.

  I went on speaking into the tape recorder.


  “You are going to keep your appointment outside the Chateau Frontenac Hotel. You will carry your Luger automatic with you as you perform all the acts precedent to the moment when you are to pull the trigger. You will not—I repeat, not—pull the trigger of the Luger. You can aim it, after you make certain no one can see you —but you will not be able to pull the trigger.

  “You will come out of the hynpotic trance after Henri Planget has disappeared from sight.

  “I repeat, you will act perfectly normally, as if you were going to shoot Henri Planget. You will make certain you are not observed as you take up your post. You will draw and hold and aim the Luger, if you are sure no one is looking at you. But you will not be able to pull its trigger. Your trigger finger has no strength. Your trigger finger has no strength.”

  I went on like that until the tape ended and the recorder clicked off. I sighed and sat back in my chair. My forehead was wet with sweat. My hands were shaking in reaction.

  I rewound the tape, set it to repeat.

  Then I got the little electric motor with the spiral disc on it, placing it beside the tape recorder. I plugged in the motor and rested both my hands on the buttons. I pressed at both buttons exactly the same moment.

  The wheel began to revolve. So did the tape. I fastened my eyes on the slowly spinning disc. My ears would hear the tape, but I must be in the hypnotic trance for my words to be effective.

  I went under almost at once.

  For the next hour I knew absolutely nothing. I only came to when the tape recorder clicked off. Still sleepy, I reached out and shut off the disc.

  The normal hypnotic subject does not know the things he has been told in the trance. Since I was hypnotizing myself, I did know. I drew a deep breath. Would it work? Would my subconscious mind prevent me from pulling the Luger trigger? Had I tricked it sufficiently? I did not know.

  I would only know when I aimed the Luger at Henri Planget and tried to kill him. If it worked, I was back in business as a Coxeman. If it did not, I was still a tool of HECATE, and an assassin.